


the impossible girls

by Latia



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Jadefest, Jadefest 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-24
Updated: 2014-03-24
Packaged: 2018-01-16 19:31:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1359217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Latia/pseuds/Latia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>JADE: hmmm<br/>JADE: i cant shake the feeling that we have spoken before<br/>JADE: maybe in an old dream i cant remember? </p><p>("In between when dream!Jade died and when she got pulled into being Jadesprite, it's implied she spent time in the dreambubbles. I'd like to see what it'd be like if she spent that time with Calliope and her older dogtier self, as of Calliope and older!Jade's most recent appearance in canon.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	the impossible girls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mercurialMalcontent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercurialMalcontent/gifts).



Ironically enough, her last thought was that she thought she might be dreaming.

Sight and sound and scent collided in random, illogical ways. Huge chunks of gold engulfed with flame soared past her, like giant carp in kamikaze dives. The speck of yellow that was John's sleeping form fell in an odd, drowsy arc, riding on the last desperate shove she gave him. Her thoughts somehow both sped up and slowed down in erratic bursts john john isheokayicantseehimanymore the queen miss mail lady everyonesdeadtheentireplaceisfallingfalling And the shadow was growing, growing, a shadow so huge only something like a moon could cast it, but weren't shadows supposed to feel cool and nice this isn't cool at all if anything it's getting hotter

 

hotter

 

so hot

 

Even with her eyes screwed shut, she could feel it scorching the back of her corneas. Turning her lungs charcoal black.

 

smog

fire

heat

 

 

 

 

 

 

then silence.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a while, Jade got up. Sand crunched quietly between her toes.

 

 

 

Nightfall had painted the beach in inky shades of blue-violet. Silence was only intruded on by the hiss of the tide, and from behind her, the distant hum of insects throbbing from the wilder parts of the island.

 

She walked.

 

The feeling of her soles on the edge between sea and sand was comforting, an enveloping warmth she had known since before she could speak. Jade could spend hours like this, circumnavigating the island and leaving loamy footprints in her wake.

(but was this the right memory? her memory?)

It was nicer during the daytime, when it was warmer and the sun was painting freckles on her cheeks, but there was a certain quiet beauty the beach only had at night. Millions of stars sparkled in the heavens, brighter than they would be anywhere else on Earth, The moon shone full and white on the ocean, like some sort of alien egg. The water was alight with the sky's reflection, and yet so, so dark. She thought of the things hiding under the placid surface, of the beasts with bright white eyes and innumerable curling arms. Rose would like that, hehe.

 

(but what about Rose what about John and Dave wasn't she supposed to? weren't they in the middle of?)

 

"Jade?"

 

She froze.

 

"Jade, wait up!"

 

She was the only human being on this island, there hadn't been anyone else since she had found her grandfather slumped over the table. Yet there was a voice. An impossible voice.

An impossible voice getting nearer and nearer.

Oddly enough she wasn't nearly afraid as she probably should have been. The voice wasn't threatening--if anything it was charming, with a curious lilt that was almost musical. She turned her head left and right, trying to find the source. If she had had dog's ears, she would have twitched them.

"My apologies, Jade, I really didn't mean to just drift off like that!" There came a gentle shuffling from a nearby grove of trees (but weren't they? _yards_ away, minutes ago, she could have sworn-) "I just got so caught up looking at all these splendid little plants! I never got to see any back home, so-"

The girl was tall and skeleton skinny, clad in a fancy moss green suit. But what drew Jade's eyes was above her neck. Her gray skin. Her empty white eyes.

Her horns.

The stranger paused, wavering uncertainly between the trees. "Jade, did you... change your clothes again? And, I'm sorry if this is rude of me, but what happened to your lovely ears?"

Jade stared at her, trying to sift through the dozen or so questions (who? how? ears? _ears_?) bouncing around in her skull. After a few moments of staggered silence, she was finally able to manage:

"I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Bemusement, then realization, then a deep unease flitted across the stranger's face in rapid succession. "Oh dear." It suddenly occurred to Jade that the girl's blank eyes were trained on her clothes. "Oooohhh dear." Jade looked down at herself, puzzled at why her golden Prospitian robes would set off the stranger like that

(but that can't be? Prospit couldn't be, Prospit is-)

 

(Prospit is)

 

"There you are Callie! Jeez, I was starting to get worried!"

Idly Jade thought of the robot, eyes dark and soundlessly sleeping back home. She thought of the inside of her limbs, springs all coiled, waiting to spring into life but frozen in place. That was how she imagined herself at that moment; insides coiled and tense but unable to move, an object at rest staying at rest-

"Er. Jade, I think. Uhm."

-because if the stranger with horns and lifeless eyes was an impossibility, the girl tumbling out of the grove (keeps moving around, something is very strange about the beach) was a galaxy of impossibilities, an infinity of impossibilities. Yet there she was, laughing and flashing her buck teeth like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Callie, what are you doing hiding in the trees like that? And- wait, why are you making that face? You look like you've seen a..."

 

The other girl trailed off.

 

Jade’s first thought was that she was a sunflower. She was a sunflower, tall and weedy and 90% limbs. Her long, long dark hair tiptoed a thin line between artfully unkept and just plain unkept. Curls tumbled every which way, like friendly tentacles reaching for a hug. At first glance her outfit was entirely shades of black and dark gray, but looking closer Jade could see what looked like stars twinkling around the edges of her skirt and sleeves.

But what drew Jade's eyes were the ears.

"Holy crap," breathed Jade.

"Holy _crap_ ," breathed the other Jade.

 

* * *

 

“It just happened so fast,” Jade murmured. “One second everything was fine and then it was all…” She swallowed. “Everything was _burning_.”

Three impossible girls sat cross-legged on a stage in the middle of nothing. After the other Jade had realized what was going on (a “what” she still hadn’t divulged fully to Jade) she had asked the stranger—Callie, she had called her—to bring them back to “the stage.”

As they had walked down the beach, it had begun to… fade, was the only word. “You don’t have to be nervous!” the other Jade had said. “That’s just regular dreambubble bullshit.” As the familiar beach dissolved into a black nothingness (like sugar in tea, Jade had thought), the other Jade had quickly launched into a quickly-cobbled explanation of dreambubbles and how “some weirdo” had talked to her “creepy alien cousins or something” and “glubbed them out.” If anything Jade had been more confused when it was over—a feeling the two other girls had assured her she would probably become more than familiar with. “It’d be best not to try and puzzle about it too hard.” Callie had assured her, winking a colorless eye.

When Jade tried to piece together a few of the seeming thousands of question marks in her head (where are we? why are you an older me? why are your ears so super adorable and fluffy oh my goodness fluffy fluffy so fluffy), the other Jade had simply said that she would need to explain some things before they could answer. So she had, mentally retracing her steps to the beach as well as she could.

“My first thought was…” Here she looked down at her fingers and their multicoloured bands, particularly the blue one snug around her thumb. “I needed to find John, the big lug _still_ hadn’t woken up then.”

The other Jade scoffed. “Oh, my gosh, that dope just did _not_ want to get up.”

“Right?? He was still asleep, falling out of the tower! Like, seriously?! I was shaking him and whacking the crap out of his head… and…”

Jade stared at her hands.

“Prospit was falling… and John was right in its path.”

Her fingers tightened around the soft material of her skirt.

“I had to do something.”

“You pushed him, right?” The instant it came out of Callie’s mouth she looked embarrassed. “I-I mean, I just remember reading something like that some…where…”

Callie’s voice shuffled into silence. Jade looked into what would have been a horizon, to the bright twinkling points of light that surrounded them. If she squinted hard enough she swore she could see tentacles writhing in the distance.

“You guys said… that a lot of people who end up in the dreambubbles are here because… because they died right?”

“But not all of them!” Callie quickly jumped in. “I mean, the dreambubbles were mishmashed together mainly for the purpose of _dreaming,_ people pop in all the time, when they’re asleep, when they get knocked unconscious—“

“I don’t think,” Jade said quietly, “that I am unconscious.”

Jade smiled, looking down at her charred clothes. She could still smell the smoke rising from them. Behind her one of the girls inhaled quietly, but sharply.

“The reason your friend made those bubbles…  is because we needed a new place. Because I couldn’t save Prospit.” Even without a mirror, she knew her paper-pale eyes were welling up. “Because… there isn’t a Prospit anymore.”

A new smell overwhelmed the smoking stench still lingering on Jade’s clothes—the metallic crack of uranium, a scent that, for whatever reason, made her even sadder. But she had no time to process this fact, because without warning the other Jade’s arms were around her.

“It’s okay,” the girl mumbled.

“J…” Oh god, why did her voice have to do that stupid scratchy thing, she didn’t want to cry, she absolutely could NOT cry. “John is…”

“John is a perfectly safe and healthy hormonal butthead,” the taller girl said gently. “He’s fine. He’s fine because of _you_. If he hadn’t had his dreamself he wouldn’t have been able to go godtier, and wouldn’t have been able to do like a billion things. In a way you kind of saved us all.”

Jade pressed her head against her older self’s chest. “It still… hurts. It still hurts—ugh it’s so _dumb._ I feel sad about the Prospitians. I feel sad about _Prospit_. I feel sad that I couldn’t do anything… I feel sad…” A strange twitching sensation, like a hiccup, rose in her throat. “Because I … I can’t go back there anymore, can I?”

Her shoulders hitched unpleasantly, and she had to turn away. “Fuck, _fuck_ , I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I’m acting like this… I was only the dreamself, you only needed me for carrying out what needed to be done—”

“Hey.” And she felt a hand fall on her shoulder. “No fragment of mine is going to beat herself up for being sad over _dying_. You are allowed to feel sad!”

Another hand fell on her shoulder. “She’s right. No one should ever have to apologize for having emotions. Just do what you wish to do.”

“…I still feel dumb,” Jade whispered, “but I want to cry.”

“Then cry.”

And so she did. Jade cried, and cried, and cried, crying for all the familiar Prosptian faces she’d never see again, and crying for only thing she had ever really called home. She cried, all the while thinking how downright embarrassing it was to cry in front of others, to leak awful hot tears all over her stupid self. But the impossible girls didn’t judge her. The older her just let her choke grossly all over her chest, and the strange but friendly alien hovered nearby, a little awkward, a little out of place, but in the end, nothing but kindly.

She cried for what felt like days. When she surfaced, the impossible girls were still smiling.

“Would you care,” said Callie, “to stay with us a little while?” A roll of butcher paper tumbled into existence near her open hand. “Maybe even draw a smidgen—you could make a trollsona to go along with ours!”

Jade sniffed. “What’s a… a trollsona?”

The older Jade grinned. “It’s basically a fursona, only about a million times cooler.”

Jade’s eyes went wide. “There is absolutely nothing I need more than that.”

 

* * *

_once upon a time there were three troll girls, CALLIE OHPEEE, JADINE HARLEY, and AKWETE PURMUS. they were all extremely cute and pretty and the most kickass girls in all the galaxy!! but most important of all,  they were linked by a very special thing—all three of them had the same pretty shade of green blood! so one day the three girls met up in a strange place, and found a winding white road…_

“So, um… Jade.” Jade tried to be casual as she rendered a jagged skyline in orange and yellow. “You went godtier, didn’t you?”

“Exactly right!” The taller girl looked up from her pencils to grin at Jade toothily. “I am officially a fully realized Witch of Space.”

“And you’re older too, right?”

“Right again! It’s been three years since we entered the Medium… or, um, three years… out there.”  She waved her hand vaguely at the distance. “Out in the. Not-dreambubble places.”

Jade stared at her almost relevantly. “You’re just…”

The other her tilted her head. “What?”

“So, so, _so_ cool.”

“Oh, my god—” Older Jade snorted. “I am like the furthest thing from cool.”

 “But you have all those awesome Space powers, and you’re so grown up—and you have ears!”  Jade insisted. “ _Wolf_ ears!”

“Can’t argue with that, Jade!” Callie piped off from a little further down the roll. “By all accounts, a teleporting girl with adorable doggy ears and a cute witch ensemble is essentially the coolest thing!”

A laugh. “Okay, I have to admit that my ears are pretty sweet.” She twitched one as if to make a point. “But I’m pretty much just like you guys, you know! And also, a week ago, I maaaaaaay or may not have freaked the fuck out because John started vacuuming. So. Basically, I’m not cool.”

Jade giggled, then hummed. “So… you’re living with John? I don’t really remember you explaining that… did you guys win the game?”

The older girl bit her lip.  “Er. Well, no—but we will! Soon. Hopefully. See, it’s a bit of a long story…” The Other Jade straightened up. “You see, after I went godtier…”

 

_the sisters followed this road, telling stories and jokes with one another to pass the time. they walked, and walked, and walked, and finally, when they reached the end of the curving road, they found something amazing…_

 

“Hey, um. Callie?” The horned girl had come closer as their sheet of paper had begun to slowly fill. “I hope I do not end up sticking my foot in my mouth in asking this, but, you are some sort of alien, right?”

Callie tensed an imperceptible bit. “…yes, I am. Basically I am a…” She hesitated. “A troll. An alien species with an unfortunately bloody history.  But an interesting one! I could tell you about it, if you were okay with me rambling on like a ninny for a few hours.”

Jade giggled. “It’s okay, I would absolutely love to hear you ramble on! And… for the record…”

“Hm?”

Jade hesitated, trying to choose her words carefully. “If you… decided to _not_ be a troll… that would be okay too.”

There was a stretch of silence before Callie looked at her with wide eyes. Jade smiled, as gentle and encouraging as she could. After a moment, the other girl’s gaze dropped, the look of a caught lie stamped all over her face.

“Alright. Maybe… some time.”

“Maybe some time would be great! But only if you want to.”

Callie nodded. “Right.” And then, after a fumbling pause, she laid her hand on Jade’s. “Thank you.”

Jade squeezed her fingers. That was all they needed to say.

 

_an incredible city rose out of the darkness!  towers and spires of gold glittered against the empty void, and friendly little creatures lived there. and so the three sisters approached the inhabitants of the golden city…_

 

“So, the others, they’re okay, right?”

The older Jade giggled. “Yes, like I said, John has been fine with me, and Dave and Rose were basically taking a cruise trip with the trolls.” She rolled her eyes.  “Hopefully Karkat hasn’t driven them out of their heads by now.”

“And… you said there was another Dave, right? The one that got merged with Dave’s kernelsprite.”

Abruptly the other Jade’s pencil halted. “Yeah, he was with John and me on the ship.”

“So he’s okay too?”

“Yup!”

Jade looked down at the multicolored bands on her fingers. “It’s funny… I didn’t really… get to actually meet any of them, really. Everyone’s dreamselves were still asleep, so…” She hummed. “But I knew them from your memories. And…” Absentmindedly she touched the figures that she had laid down on the paper. “Even though I didn’t actually meet them, I kind of miss them. I kind of _really_ miss them.”

 “… Yeah. I kind of really miss them too.”

Out of their pile of pencils, the red, blue, and purple ones ended up the shortest.

 

_and to their shock, the inhabitants had been waiting for them!! for you see, the girls were in actuality, the heroes of a legend told often in this city, and the people had been waiting so, so long for them!!!!! and what’s more, the people said these girls could vanquish a deep and terrible evil that threatened the entire universe!!!!!! the sisters were shocked, but had no time to really BE shocked, because before they knew it, they had to go meet the queen to prepare their plan of attack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

_to be… CONTINUED?!?!?!???!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!_

 

“Jade,” Callie was laughing.  “Those shoutpoles may be a teeny bit superfluous.”

“To quote a certain cute alien, that is poppycock!” The older Jade stuck her tongue. “This is _exactly_ the necessary amount of shoutpoles and question crisps to convey the amount of excitement and action and drama that will be in chapters to come!”

“She’s  right, Callie!” Jade piped in. “There is no bit of writing ever that cannot be improved with more punctuation!”

“Haha! Harley solidarity!” The appropriate high five was traded.

“Goodness, I suppose I can’t argue with that…”

Their laughter trailed off as they looked over their work. The sheet of paper, about the length of a car, was entirely colored with their art. Jade’s eyes moved over it, watching their characters travel from a dark nothingness to a sprawling marigold city, ending with an ominous multicolored (but especially green, she noted) blob lurking threateningly in a corner.

“It’s really good,” she said admiringly. “Though… Jade, I’m still a little confused, why did you name your trollsona that?”

“What? Oh,” the other Jade giggled. “Welllll, it’s actually kind of a funny stor—”

Jade’s shoulders suddenly jumped. Without warning she felt strangely… faint. She looked back to the girls, who returned her confused expression twofold.

“What… what was that? Am I…” Jade looked down to see her hands go slightly translucent. “I’m fading!”

Callie’s eyes grew wide. “Oh… oh dear. I think our dreambubbles are beginning to separate.”

Jade looked up. “So does that mean I’m leaving?”

“… I’m afraid so.”

“Oh.” The word tasted less bitter on her tongue than she thought it would be. “Well… that kind of sucks. But I had a really great time with you guys!” To her relief her smile didn’t feel forced. It wasn’t a lie- she _did_ have a great time, and that knowledge would be enough. “I really… I really can’t thank you enough--“

“Wait!”

Jade and Callie’s gazes jumped to their companion. The older Jade looked surprisingly upset, her ears wilted and her fists clenched lightly.

“Jade?” Callie asked. “Whatever is the matter?”

She didn’t look at Callie, nor at Jade. Her big green eyes were trained on the floor.

“Jade, if I… if we were to ever… meet again, and it’s the thirteen year old me, and if she—if I’m mean to you… if I act like a jerk… I’m sorry.” She looked up at Jade. “I’m really sorry. I was kind of… weird about feelings and stuff when I was younger and… I’m just really sorry for… if I treat you badly, okay?”

Jade was taken aback. “I… it’s okay, Jade, but I can’t possibly imagine you being mean to me at all!”

Neither Callie nor the other Jade answered. Neither Callie or the other Jade were there anymore.

 

 

Jade was alone again.

 

 

After a while, she sighed, looking down. The vestiges of the path Callie had summoned were still under her feet. Other than that, her dreambubble was open and impossibly empty.

 

But no one said it had to be that way, right?

 

“They walked, and walked, and walked,” Jade murmured absently, sauntering slowly down the ghost of the path. “And finally, when they reached the end of the curving road, they found something amazing…”

Metal and copper began to coil out of the darkness, writhing like alien plants. Beam found seam and before Jade’s eyes, buildings started to bleed into existence around her. A familiar yellow cobblestone scraped against her shoes. Spires stretched to an invisible sky, higher and higher, so high she could barely see it. And as Jade looked up to watch their growth, she could see that the points of light in the distance were not stars, but bubbles. Countless, countless dreambubbles. 

Jade looked around, surrounded by familiar golds and yellows, and smiled. Just like she remembered. The only thing she was missing was friends to visit her city. Luckily, she thought, watching the dozens of lights growing closer and closer with each passing minute, she didn’t think she was going to have a shortage of those anytime soon.

 


End file.
